


I Want No World

by SonnetCXVI



Series: The Deepest Secret Nobody Knows [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonnetCXVI/pseuds/SonnetCXVI
Summary: After Cosima's death, Delphine tries to keep her promises.





	

I

Looking back on it later, Delphine marvels that the pivot point of her life lasted less than ten minutes. It’s was such a small hinge, she thinks, that moment when she acknowledged that Cosima would actually die, a small hinge that swung open a terrible, terrible door. And now, every day, no matter what she does, the door is open and she steps through it.

II

Delphine is impotent and defeated after Cosima’s death, the stuffing knocked out of her, unable to punish anyone for the fucking injustice of the last few months. It is unbearable, this circle of anguish. All that they went through, all they sacrificed, all of Cosima’s suffering and brave tenacity were for nothing. She hates that Cosima had so little chance to enjoy their happiness, only months really, before she told Delphine with a quivering chin that she thought she was sick again. And then only months before she was tiny and wasted and unconscious in their bed. Delphine has now lived longer without Cosima than she had lived with her in their house.

III

She tries to keep her promises, to love the sestras, to finish the house. She watches a video and then puts up the drywall in the study by herself, despite how difficult it is to manage the heavy slabs without help. She damages several and cries in frustration more than once. Some days she sits on the floor holding her tool belt. Other days, she doesn’t get out of bed. But she wants to do this because she promised and because Cosima had wanted so much for them to do the work on the house themselves, so she forces herself to continue, trying again and again until it is right.

She buys paint and bookcases, choosing what she thinks Cosima would have preferred. She purchases a leather sofa and a Persian rug. She finds an antique reproduction of Da Vinci’s _Vitruvian Man_ and has it beautifully matted and framed, to hang by the door. Cosima’s belongings she installs around the room, trying to find an arrangement that allows her to see a reminder of her love no matter where she looks. Finally, she sets Cosima’s laptop on the desk.

But when the study is finished, she feels emptier than when she started. Cosima is not there, even though Delphine has tried to conjure her. The study is a monument to … absence. Cosima has not, after all, ever been in this room and Delphine has no memories of her there. She wonders if she is intentionally torturing herself.

IV

Months pass. She meets with the sestras when she can no longer put them off. They eat Chinese food in Felix’s loft, they play darts and get hammered at a bar, they meet at Alison’s for lavish family dinners. The family is always solicitous and gentle, allowing her to exist among them without responsibility or pressure. They try to make her laugh and sometimes she does. But the grief neither passes nor abates. It is the last particle she has of Cosima and she can’t release it, her lifelong intensity and tenacity turned in on herself like some sort of sick, ironic ouroboros, as bit by bit she eats her heart.

V

At Christmas dinner, more than a year after Cosima’s death, Sarah, Alison, and Siobhan huddle in Alison’s kitchen after the children have been put to bed and converse in hushed tones about what to do about Delphine.

“She’s hardly in there anymore,” hisses Alison. “If she gets any thinner she’s going to collapse.” 

“I don’t know what else to do,” whispers Sarah. “We can’t force her to feel better.” 

“Look,” says Siobhan, “it will never leave her, ever, no matter what you do. She can only learn to live despite it. Just keep loving her.”

Meanwhile, Felix and Helena sit in the living room with her and try awkwardly to act normal. She makes small talk, inquiring about their love lives and Felix’s painting. Felix’s tells a story about a lover’s thinking that the paint on his ass was something disgusting and she laughs and thanks him for putting that picture into her head. But they can tell that she is exhausted from the day and is starting to fray. Felix excuses himself on the pretext of getting another drink and goes into the kitchen to tell his sisters that they need to wrap it up so that she can exit gracefully.

Out they come and Siobhan says, “I’m gonna go check on the kids and then say goodnight. It was lovely to see you, Delphine.” 

Delphine rises and kisses Siobhan on both cheeks, in the French manner. Then she goes to the entryway and begins to struggle into her coat and heavy boots. When she is wrapped up, she kisses the sisters and holds each in her arms for a long moment. If they are surprised by this unexpected intimacy, they don’t show it. 

Sarah is the last to say goodbye and she extends the embrace when Delphine moves to break away. She says, “Cosima would want you to be happy, yeah? We’re here. You don’t have to do this alone.” 

Delphine nods in Sarah’s arms and says tearily, “I know.” 

Then she steps out the front door and pauses for the briefest moment to collect herself. When she turns she gives them a dazzling smile, her eyes still wet. “ _Au revoir_ ,” she says. “Thank you so much for everything. I give you all my love,” and leaves them with a little wave, her blonde hair momentarily aglow in the porch light.

VI

As she drives home, she tells herself that she has been unkind in her solitude. She promised Cosima that she would love her sisters, but she has found that she can only do it from afar. The connections are too tender. When she looks at them she sees Cosima. Over and over she catches a glimpse of Alison or Sarah out of the corner of her eye and thinks for a fraction of a second that it’s her love. Over and over she slams into the knowledge that Cosima is dead. The wound is so abraded now that she is mostly too weak to endure it and it takes a long time to pull herself together after she has been with them.

Of all the ways that she has failed Cosima, she thinks, this broken promise to love her sisters is the most unpardonable. In all her ruined life, this is the weakness of which she is most ashamed.

When she gets home, she sits in the dark study, staring out the window onto the quiet street, and drinks a glass of whiskey. _That shit’s false comfort_ , Cosima had commented once. _Pot is totally less deceitful, you know? But, I like to way you taste when you drink it_ , she had admitted as they kissed. 

_I’m sorry, Cosima_ , she thinks as she swallows. _I am so terribly sorry._

VII

When she has finished her drink, she sits for a long time hoping it will snow again. She likes the silence of snow. Silence suits her. It mirrors her increasing emptiness as everything falls away. Snow allows her to be passive. She only has to watch it fall; she doesn’t have to manage or schedule or run tests on it. Enough snow, she thinks, might cover the sound of Cosima’s groaning.

Eventually she sets her glass on the floor by her chair, then turns off her phone and sets it on the sill. Sitting back, she closes her eyes. She can manage nothing but to breathe in and out. She empties her mind.

Later, when she awakens in the heart of the night, the darkness had deepened. The house is silent. Snow has covered the walk.

_I will find you. I promise._

The barrel clicks against her teeth when she puts the pistol into her mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks everyone for coming along on this journey. 
> 
> All titles come from this poem, which I have excerpted here. I can almost never read it without crying. It just speaks to me, I guess. No copyright infringement intended.
> 
> i fear  
> no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want  
> no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)  
> and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
> and whatever a sun will always sing is you
> 
> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
> (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
> and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
> higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
> and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)  
> \--- E.E. Cummings
> 
>  


End file.
